I have a BS in Aeronautics.I fly airplanes and helicopters.I pick my nose a lot. 

At the same time, I'm asking myself: am I cutting off my nose to spite my face by not discounting?

They are the world's 8th largest economy and banks all over Europe and even in the U.S. have large exposure (one reason Bank of America's stock took a nose dive).

If you are really determined to get this one done, the best answer is another lender (and an extended timeline), or pay through the nose to get it done fast with this guy.

I would turn the properties over to a thoroughly screened hard nose PM company and instruct them to raise rents to market and apply annual rent increases to maintain market rents.

I've smelt and seen things that my nose and eyes will never recover from.

Obviously I'd rather not lose any of my cash investment, because losing sucks and also I don't want the wife to rescind her blessing with respect to my investing - but I also don't want to cut off my nose to spite my face.

Use your eyes and nose to see if they're being untruthful.  

They're long gone and I'm still finding "easter eggs" of poorly done crap that makes my job harder, or things done wrong enough that I had to redo them, like he used stair nosing instead of stool molding for the window sills.

That will further degrade home values for those in close proximity.Scituate values have been on a long steady increase (except for the crash starting in 2006 and running to 2009) since the time we bought the home in 1985, so I can't point to a direct correlation between commuter rail service and home values rising - though that seems to be the conventional wisdom.Service started in 2007 and the real estate crash was well underway, so any additional value gained by the new commuter rail service would in my opinion be dwarfed by the nose-diving home prices.I do think in general that it's a net positive for those wanting to work in Boston - or at least parts of Boston that are within walking distance of Government Center / Financial district / South Station, etc.